Teller's True Calling

SomethingAwful.com does a thing called Photoshop Phriday. They suggest a theme, and photoshop gurus put something together and put it into a gallery. This one was Unwanted Soundtracks. But I might actually buy this one!

Featured on BoingBoing.net

As you know, a buddy of mine and I created a website promoting the game of Cornhole. We've had a fair amount of success. We have about 40 members, and about a dozen are actively posting in the message forums. We've been getting a lot of hits for people looking for information. Our average is about 80 hits a day which isn't bad considering we are such a niche market. We are ranked #2 on Google for 'building cornhole' searches and usually on the front page of most any other cornhole related search. So we have enjoyed moderate success. Much more than we anticipated, which is a nice surprise.

But yesterday, our traffic went through the roof. According to our web tracker, most of our hits came from BoingBoing.net. This is a group like Fark.com, SomethingAwful.com or i-am-bored.com. They're basically a group that finds random stuff on the internet and posts it in their blog. They did a quick blurb about our website and in 4 hours, we got 560 hits within 4 hours of that post. Since then, we're close to 2000 hits in 16 hours of it being posted. It's starting to pop on a bunch of other blogs as well. The funny thing is, other than boingboing.net, our other top referrer is a Hungarian blog. The traffic is mostly people who pop onto our front page, look really quick and then leave. They don't explore any of the links much at all. But its fun to see our stats grow and see where our guests come from.

You can check out the boingboing.net post here.

New Poll!

I got bored with the poll measuring the sinfullness of smoking. So I decided I'd add a poll on the sinfullness of drinking. Make your voice heard and cast your vote on the sidebar!

World Of Warcraft

Ian sent me a free trial of World of Warcraft. It was a 10 day trial and I thought I'd take advantage of it over my birthday weekend. What a cool game. I tend to like RPG style of games where you build up your characters. I typically don't like real time games, but with WOW I didn't mind it so much. I think the cool thing about it is the professions you can have. I hope they expand the possibilities with that. So not only do you fight and build strength and collect bounty, you can also work on your professional skills. I was a miner and blacksmith. So I was allowed to make weapons and armor and sell to others (keeping the good stuff for myself). The only thing I didn't like is that after you get to a certain point, you really have to join a group to adventure with. The adventures are way too big for you to do it alone. I can see how this would be fun, but your more socially reclusive people, like myself, would rather adventure alone. I guess I didn't play long enough to explore this a bit more. I let my free trial lapse and after 10 days, my account is dead.

Am I hooked? Well, kinda. I really enjoyed the game and I really want to play more. I can really see how people can get sucked into it. But unfortunately, I don't have the attention span anymore to spend hours behind a computer to play a game. I think that is why I prefer board games (German style games). I can play a game face to face and the game is completed in less than 3 hours. But, I think I'm going to try WOW again this winter when warm weather is no longer calling my name. Being more shut in, I think I'll find a bit more time to play.

Thanks Ian for giving me the chance to try it out and showing me the ropes. I had a great time. Perhaps this winter, I can revive my character and we can pound down some orcs.

His Music Lives On!

Kirk Cobain may be dead, but his music lives on. Especially in England. Check out this band doing their version of Teen Spirit. It's awesome!

http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=17602

Best TV Quote, Ever!

Nicole and I recently got into Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV show. Have you seen any of these episodes? They're fantastic! We rented the first season from Netflix. We got into it so much that we didn't want to wait for Netflix to send us the next disk, so we bought seasons 2 and 3. I've been curious about it for years, but never took the time to watch an episode. It looked too cheesy and bad for me to like it. But academic critics LOVE the show. So we decided to check it out. It is really well crafted. The cast is perfectly chosen and the stories actually have commentary (from an academic standpoint) on society. Each episode is self contained and follows a basic story arch. It's a whole lot of action, a bit of spookiness, a touch of romance, with a generous dose of campiness. I love a show that doesn't take themselves too seriously.

Anyway, the point of this is that you should go rent the first season and check it out. And secondly, the best quote from a TV show, I heard from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The character Oz (Seth Green) notices that the monkey in the Animal Crackers box has a shirt and pants.

“The monkey's the only cookie animal that gets to wear clothes, you know that?…So, I'm wondering, do the other cookie animals feel sorta ripped? Like, is the hippo going, 'Hey, man, where are *my* pants? I have my hippo dignity!' And you know the monkey's just, (with a French accent) 'I mock you with my monkey pants!' And there's a big coup in the zoo.”

So there we have it. The best quote in television history;

“I mock you with my monkey pants!” ---Oz (Seth Green), Buffy The Vampire Slayer - Season 2, Episode 10

Diet Coke & Mentos Experiment

OK. This has to be the craziest thing I've seen in a long time. Check it out.